


Love on Ice

by rebel_diamond



Series: Love on Ice [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, I think I need to turn this into a longer thing, Potential Future Smut, Toe Pick!, figure skating AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 14:43:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13661133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebel_diamond/pseuds/rebel_diamond
Summary: Figure skater Belle and coach Gold. At the Olympics. Over Valentine’s Day. For the February @a-monthly-rumbelling prompt: Love Letter, Candy Hearts, Chocolate, Roses, Blind Date *NOTE This story is the only one out of order. It was the first written, but chronologically it comes last.





	Love on Ice

**Author's Note:**

> For the February @a-monthly-rumbelling prompt: Love Letter, Candy Hearts, Chocolate, Roses, Blind Date

“Again,” the familiar Scottish brogue echoed in the empty rink.

Belle felt the practice ice through her black leggings. She had once more fallen on the throw triple lutz. A move she’d executed perfectly in Worlds without fail but had become a chronic problem since they’d arrived in Pyeongchang. She scrambled up off the ice, not bothering to glance over at their coach. She knew what she’d see. His narrowed, condemnatory eyes framed by his long hair, which brushed his coat collar, upturned to combat the chill in the building. Even for practices, he wore an immaculate three piece suit. When Gold began coaching them three years ago he’d sported a perpetual five o’clock shadow that complimented his dismissal of them as serious senior level competitors. But he’d cleaned up once they’d become contenders for the national championship. Belle found herself missing the unkempt look every time she saw him.

Belle looped around the ice again until she felt Gaston fall into pace behind her. She extended her left arm, waiting for her partner’s familiar grip on her wrist. They rotated so she was gliding backward. Then he spun her so her back was to his chest, and she braced her hands with Gaston’s at her waist. Belle counted off in her head, bent her knees and propelled up, crossing her arms over her clavicle. One rotation. Two. Three. Her left blade hit. And then the ice was coming up to meet her face. She slid on her knees in a graceless heap.

“Again,” Gold barked from behind the boards. Belle climbed up from the ice, a little slower than the last. And the time before that.

She curved across the ice again, ignoring both of the men in the rink with her except to listen for Gaston’s approach. Extend, grip, rotate, spin, brace, count, bend, up…and fall.

She heard Gold’s “Again” in her head automatically and moved to repeat rounding the ice.

“LeGume,” he called out instead, “take a break.” She would have preferred ‘Again.’

Gaston circled the ice, “I don’t need a break.”

“I wasn’t asking,” was his terse reply. Belle skated around until the slam of the heavy double doors signaled Gaston’s disappearance. She slid to a stop where Gold stood. Still not looking at him, she sipped from the water bottle that he handed her.

“What is it?” Gold demanded without preface.

“Nothing,” she answered automatically. Belle French. Always the people pleaser. Nothing was ever wrong.

And what was there to complain about, really? They were on Olympic practice ice. Something she’d longed for since the first time she’d step onto a rink. Though Belle lived in the United States, she was following her dream of representing France, the country of her parents, following in the footsteps of her mother who skated for her country in ice dancing in the early 80’s.

But her mother was the problem. Belle couldn’t stop thinking about her. Generally, she was so consumed with practice, media, and meeting with the other Olympians from all over the world, she barely knew what day it was. But something on the calendar hanging in her room in the Olympic Village triggered it. Valentine’s Day was this week. Of all the holidays, it was the most commercial, sure, and seemed like such a silly thing to get hung up on.

When her mother was alive, she and her mother and father would celebrate Valentine’s Day together, partly because it was her family’s biggest windfall of the year. Her father would bring them both home roses from the flower shop he owned, a bouquet for her mother, a single rose for her. When she got older, Belle and her mother would watch old, black and white films where the couple wouldn’t embrace until the last minutes of the film. Their home would be peppered with books of love poetry. But ever since her mother died, her father no longer brought home flowers. As the years went on they became increasingly focused on Belle’s skating career and family traditions fell by the wayside.

But Belle was a romantic, a trait inherited from her mother, and she was at the Olympics during Valentine’s Day, where hookups were a regular occurrence, apparently, considering the number of condom dispensers she saw throughout the Olympic Village and how often they were running low. The last date she’d been on, if you could call it that, was the “blind date” her father and an ex-coach had set her up on the ice to see if she and Gaston would do well as partners. She was pseudo dating Gaston, in a way. They were together all the time. People made assumptions and Gaston and her father didn’t do anything to dissuade them. Gaston had even kissed her on several occasions. But were they only together to the extent that they were because of their convenient proximity to each other. She’d given her entire life to skating. To the detriment of all other areas of her life. She’d been matched with Gaston when she was sixteen. Now she was twenty-two. And sometimes, when she was alone, she thought about maybe not skating, and what else her life could be.

“You think the Russians don’t have a perfect triple lutz in their program?” he sounded short with her, but she could see the concern in his eyes. Sometimes she stared into his eyes hoping to pull out even more. She remembered being so scared of him when he became their coach when she was nineteen. She’d heard such terrifying stories from other skaters. He scared most people, but not her. At some point during their tenure as coach and student, the knots of fear in her stomach when she made a mistake on the ice or challenged him out of frustration turned to heat and his responses to her sassing him gave her twinges even lower. In private moments she thought of him putting his gruff demands to better use.

He stood like a statue, awaiting her response. He was so still when he watched them. He wasn’t animated at all like he was in old videos of his pairs performances with his ex-wife she’d found buried online. He and Milah represented Great Britain in two Olympics and were regular British National Champions. Back then he was mercurial and dramatic on the ice. Now, retired and divorced, he stood in constant quiet judgment. He was known for being a loner who was uncompromising in his demand for perfection, but he got results.

She raised her chin, “I’ll get it. Don’t worry.” She couldn’t help the tears that sprang to her eyes. He probably thought she was upset because she was doing to terribly.

The corner of his mouth twitched and his hand left his coat pocket and reached out to her. She held her breath. He had his hand at her arm before deciding against it and dropping it back to his side. Her shoulders dropped. How much better she would have felt it he’d cupped her cheek with his warm palm and ran his thumb over her bottom lip. If only he’d tell her the hell with triple lutzes. That after the Olympics they could travel the world together and not spend a minute of it inside an ice rink.

“Go get some rest. We have ice again at five.”

And just like that, the illusion vanished and she was dismissed.

She sped across the ice and stepped off, threw on her skate guards, and snatched her bag off the bench. She was always being told what to do. By her father, by Gaston…and of course by him. Though hearing it from Gold was somehow worse, like she was a child. He spoke to her the same way at twenty-two as he had when she was nineteen. Sometimes she’d fantasize about what it would feel like to rebel. What if, after her and Gaston’s live performance, she jumped up on the boards and threw her arms around Gold and demand that he kiss her. That would be a reversal of roles. How shocked they would all be.

She grabbed food from the athlete dining hall in Olympic Plaza and meandered her way back to her room, watching people from all over the world rush past her and great each other in a dozen different languages. Staying in the Olympic Village was her favorite thing about being here. All the people and places she’d only ever read about were represented. Most of all she loved her room. It was decorated with the flag of France and bouquets of Korean roses, South Korea’s national flower, that had been given to her during the team competition had been placed in vases on all the tables.

A piece of paper was on her bed, probably a note from her father or one of the other skaters she shared the suite with. There was a scattering of candy hearts over the note. Not the pastel sugar ones with the silly sayings found in America, but jelly ones that were local to Korea. She brushed them off to reveal the writing underneath.

O wert thou in the cauld blast,  
On yonder lea, on yonder lea,  
My plaidie to the aingry airt,  
I’d shelter thee, I’d shelter thee.  
Or did misfortune’s bitter storms  
Around thee blaw, around thee blaw,  
The bield should be my bosom,  
To share it a’, to share it a’.

Or were I in the wildest waste,  
Sae black and bare, sae black and bare,  
The desert were a Paradise,  
If thou wert there, if thou wert there;  
Or were I monarch o’ the globe,  
Wi’ thee to reign, wi’ thee to reign,  
The brightest jewel in my crown  
Wad be my queen, wad be my queen.

She recognized Gold’s neat penmanship immediately. The notepad it was written on also gave him away. It was from the hotel he was staying in because he refused to stay in the Olympic Village with the rest of the team. Under the letter, he’d hidden a chocolate bar with a Korean wrapper.

He’d known she was struggling without her having to say it. He’d also given her the roses, in a way. He’d marshaled her biggest, most unattainable dreams into reality. He’d given her all of it. And now, whether he meant to or not, Gold had restored Valentine’s Day to her.

Belle unwrapped the candy bar and flopped down on her bed with a goofy grin. She broke off a piece and savored it. She wasn’t a complete schoolgirl. The Robert Burns poem could be interpreted as more protective than romantic. But it was also the loveliest thing anyone had ever done for her. She let the chocolate melt on her tongue. Maybe another fantasy of her’s wasn’t so unattainable either.


End file.
